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Portrait bust of a man, known as the Pseudo-Seneca. Gallery, Cragside, Northumberland
Summary
Sculpture, marble; the Pseudo-Seneca; Italian, probably Naples, after the antique; c. 1850-1900. A marble portrait bust of an ancient poet or philosopher of the type formerly known as the ‘Pseudo Seneca’, the best-known Roman version of which was the bronze bust discovered at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum in 1754. The Cragside version in marble, a copy of the Herculaneum bronze, was probably made in Naples in the nineteenth century.
Full description
A marble portrait bust of an elderly man, with a gaunt face and scraggy neck, his head turned slightly to his right. He is bearded and locks of his untidy hair fall onto his forehead. He has a prominent broken nose. The man has an intense and tragic expression, his mouth slightly open, as if he is speaking. Mounted on a fior di pesco marble waisted socle, in turn placed on a column of the same marble. The bust is a copy of a bronze bust discovered in Herculaneum in 1754, in the so-called Villa of the Papyri, and today in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples (Inv. MANN 5616; Le Collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, Rome 1989, no. 165). The Herculaneum bronze is arguably the best of as many as around forty surviving versions of a lost Greek bronze which was probably made around 200 B.C., and which must have enjoyed great popularity in the ancient world. Other surviving examples in marble include versions in the Rubenshuis in Antwerp, the Uffizi in Florence and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In the sixteenth century, the model came to be identified as the Roman philosopher and stoic Seneca (c. 4 BC- AD 65) and began to be used in depictions of Seneca, for example those by Peter Paul Rubens, who owned a version of the head. Rubens’s example has sometimes been thought to be the one in the Ashmolean Museum, which is now recognised as a modern copy made in Italy c. 1575-1625, but more recently the version in the Rubenshuis has also been claimed as the one that formerly belonged to the painter. The sitter is now known not to be Seneca, hence the modern name Pseudo-Seneca; he is instead thought to be a Greek poet, perhaps Hesiod, who lived in the seventh century BC. The marble head at Cragside is a close copy of the bronze head at Naples and was very likely made in Naples, by one of the companies active in the making of copies such as Chiurazzi, which whilst specialising in bronzes, also made copies in marble and other materials. Nineteenth- or twentieth-century bronze copies of the Herculaneum head appear frequently on the art market. Jeremy Warren March 2022
Source: https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1231033
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